Microsoft releases fix to protect users from reply-all email storm

San Francisco, May 11 (IANS): Microsoft has started rolling out a tool designed to protect Office 365 users worldwide from reply-all email storms.

When a reply all mail storm occurs in an organisation, it can disrupt business continuity and in some cases even throttle the rest of the organisation’s email for a period of time.

It happens when someone forgets to BCC everyone or misconfigures a distribution list and a large number of people start sending their replies to the email thread.

Called “Reply All Storm Protection”, the feature will initially mostly benefit large organisations who have large distribution lists.

At the beginning, it will detect 10 reply-all emails to over 5,000 recipients within 60 minutes, The Verge reported on Sunday.

But Microsoft said it is working to improve the tool so that a broader range of organisations benefit from the feature.

“Over time, as we gather usage telemetry and customer feedback, we expect to tweak, fine-tune, and enhance the Reply All Storm Protection feature to make it even more valuable to a broader range of Office 365 customers,” said Microsoft’s Exchange transport team.

“We are considering possible future enhancements to improve our reply all storm detection accuracy, add admin customizable thresholds and block duration, as well as producing reply all storm reports and notifications,” it added.

Revealing some first-hand experience with the tool, the software giant said it has already seen the first version of the feature successfully reducing the impact of reply all storms within Microsoft.